mrtblt :
I want to centralize our files which my colleagues access frequntly in the office?
For this purpose, I am using and old laptop dedicated for this job. Nowadays I am thinking of achizition of a server. But I dont know If I buy a new server, this will provide me with some performance and security in plus?
Should I really replaceour old laptop with a new server?
Here is the link for the server which I am plannig to buy.
http://www.emag.ro/sisteme_server/s...m-174-g6950-280ghz-1x2gb-1x250gb--p470065-321
Ok as an enterprise admin I'll walk you through this.
Firstly, how much is this data worth? As in create a dollar value of what it would take to reproduce it and how much revenue that data is responsible for. This will give you a good idea on how much you should spend and what level of protection you should apply to it. More levels of protection equal most costs, both direct and indirect.
Next based on your previous determination, is it financially worth it to have a dedicated system? Almost invariably if your talking about a business then the answer is yes. The exact system you decide to purchase will depend on how much availability you want it to provide (redundant PSU / HDD / ect..) and how many clients it will be servicing. The rule of thumb is that a client OS is good for up to 10 simultaneous connections, anything more will require a dedicated server OS. Either NT or a Unix variant (Linux / Solaris / BSD). You can get by with as little as 1~2GB of memory if your just servicing a dozen or less clients. What counts is the HDD availability.
Which brings me to the big point. Absolutely ignore the peanut gallery here. The value of that data will dictate the level of redundancy and storage you use. If your making it to this part then you've already determined that the data is revenue generating data or otherwise high value data and should be protected. In this case under no circumstance should you use software based "fake" RAID. Things like ZFS or Windows RAID are fine, but anything relying on a software driver for a motherboard / HBA is absolutely out of the picture, and here is why.
When doing building your disaster recovery kit (DRK) you will need to go over potential disaster scenarios. One of which is that the system is smoked but the HDDs survive. "Fake RAID" relies on controller specific logic to organize and create the logical volume. The format used is propriety and controller specific. To access your data you will need an exact copy of whatever board / HBA you used in the first place. Seeing that the original board is smoked this means you'll be ordering a new one and waiting for it to arrive. If your using read HW raid via an actual server HBA, then you can remove the HBA and use it in your temp system. Also most HW RAID HBA venders will provide you with a software tool to reconstruct your RAID data from raw disks in case the HBA itself got smoked, rarely will you get this for a "fake RAID" device. If your using something like ZFS / Windows RAID then just connecting the drives to a new system and importing them will yield immediate access to your data.
And absolutely never purchase a "NAS" device. Those are just mini PC's running a customized Linux OS that share out their disks. They lack redundant features and have horrible performance compared to a real server. If your going to be spending money on this, might as well do it right and get a real system.
For a recommendation, a good middle ground device is one of the ProRAID enclosures from mediasonic.
http://ain.mediasonic.ca/store/product_info.php?cPath=26_51&products_id=235
$200 USD for a four bay external enclosure that supports eSATA and USB 3. The enclosure does it's own HW RAID processing and doesn't require a software driver, it's real RAID not "fake raid". The enclosure it detachable so if the system ever goes up in smoke you can just plug it into a laptop and your data is accessible again. It supports eSATA for fast access speeds and USB for the aforementioned disaster scenario. I'd recommend against sharing out a FS via USB, there are some serious latency issues involved. Another advantage is depending on your current laptop and how fast you need this data, you can just connect it to the laptop and share it out that way. Load a server OS onto the laptop, something like NT Small business server or use something like CentOS instead.
And for what it's worth, this is what I'm using at my home. I built my own Mini-ITX server and have one of these connected to it via eSATA. I share out the file system to all devices in my home and use it as a centralized file server, DNS and AD server.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram